Everyone's favorite Spanish Stallion rode a couple of clutch putts and a risky wedge on the island-green to a playoff victory at the Players Championship Sunday.
The first playoff in 21 years at The Players was short-lived. After Paul Goydos watched his wedge catch drift into the water, Sergio Garcia watched his shot land within 4 feet.
He effed up the birdie putt, but could afford some suck as Goydos double-bogeyed to hand Sergio his first tournament victory in 53 PGA Tour starts, spanning three long years.
"First of all, I want to thank Tiger for not being here," he joked... except he totally wasn't joking.
Garcia, whose seven PGA Tour victories are the most by any player under the age of 30, walked away with $1.71 million from the richest purse in golf after a 5-under 283 finish.
Were Skip Bayless and Bernhard Langer separated at birth? And if so, how did their mother choose?
Langer's remarkable performance in going round in 67 Friday at the age of 50 leaves him at 5-under par over his two rounds in The Players Championship, knotted up at second with Paul Goydos and Sergio Garcia, and one stroke behind Kenny Perry.
Recently in the sports blogosphere, several bloggers have found themselves in hot water when their secret identity was revealed. They've found themselves fired from their regular day jobs as newspaper reporters and the like.
If we, as a group, are to be judged by our present occupations, it's a short step until we're also judged for our shameful past. And if we have learned anything from the news (and no, we have not, and neither have you), it is this…
It is not the crime that gets you killed. It is the cover up.
Also, following a cash payment of $10 for my membership card, a Professional Putter of America, which meant that I could play in adult tournaments that were, I shit you not, televised in the early days of ESPN.
What in the hell, you might ask, is a Junior Putter? Basically, it was (is?) Little League for miniature golf players, though we would become highly offended and agitated if you called it that.
(Why did I go for this instead of, you know, Little League? One year of failing to catch the ball, mostly because I do not have binocular vision or much in the way of depth perception, was more than enough. It also did not help that I was cowardly, slow, weak, and puny. Moving on.)
You see, we did not play miniature golf, with its clown face animals, unreliable chute holes, and revolving fan blades.
Such things were garish.
Uncouth.
Beneath us.
No, we were Sport Putters.
Sport Putting means stroking the ball just so, with back and front spins, or aiming for arcane sight lines or marks, so that you could get just the right kind of bank shot. So you are more or less playing pool, but with a putter.
You also had to "read" the green, which is to say, know when the concrete under the felt or Astroturf (but mostly felt) sagged, buckled, or tilted. The YouTube clip at the top of this entry gives you the gist, complete with intimidating towel snaps.
If you are very good at this, you get holes in one routinely, so that your score is at least in the low ‘30s, and maybe even down to the rare but possible 18. (My low: 27 in competition. I was more of a grinder than an acemaster.)
Yes, there were teams, and jerseys, and I was a team captain in 4-on-4 match plays where 20 to 30 people would follow two tweener boys around as if we were Palmer and Nicklaus, only, you know, really, really not.
It also meant winning trophies where the figure on the trophy is putting, which is to say, looking like he is grabbing his junk and squeezing it for all he is worth.
I got good enough at this to make All Star teams.
Win tournaments.
Go, on three separate occasions, to the National Championships in Memphis, TN and Richmond, VA.
In my final year, I placed in the top 20 in the nation of all 15-year-olds in stroke play.
It even got me to second base as a 15-year-old, with a real live girl, who was somehow struck by my Tiger-esque death stare of concentration and sport putting honed ass.
Anyway, now that this is out of the bag, I can go back to the business of blogging, secure in the knowledge that the worst is over. And that, with the assistance of my forced-smiling spouse that I've frog-marched out to this press conference, the healing process can begin.
Oh, and if you doubt my skills, we will settle this in the only way it can really be settled – for the early ‘80s high stakes wager of a buck a stroke at Philadelphia #1, Course #2.
You just name the time, and I’ll bring my steel centered special putting balls, golden PPA embossed blade (I called him "Excalibur"), 25 year old trick shot memories, extraordinarily dated smack talk, and a great deal of pain – almost all of it self-inflicted.
If you saw John Daly while watching the PGA Tour action at the Wachovia Championship Friday afternoon, you were sorely mistaken. That rather husky man was Carl Pettersson. You know, the Swedish John Daly.
Yeah, they don't really let Daly tour with the big dogs anymore. He's like that creepy, drunk uncle at the family reunion, who everyone just kind of ignores until he passes out in the garage.
No, the 595th-ranked Daly, who hasn't finished in the top 10 of any tourney in three years, was busy missing the cut at the Spanish Open in Seville Friday, despite closing out the day with an eagle and playing his last nine holes in just 32. His second round 70 for a 1+par of 145 was just a little less than sufficient.
All this, on the heels of his whore-of-an-ex-wife's inappropriate relationship with Roger Clemens being nationally outed, makes for a pretty crappy week for JD.
Have a beer on us, buddy. Or a case.
P.S. The Wachovia lead belongs to Jason Bohn, who we've affectionately nicknamed "Bohner". He's hanging on by two strokes after two rounds of play while Man Boobs slipped seven adrift after double bogeying the 15th and 18th. (Nipples!)
The tree, which stands alone on the otherwise forest-free course along Puget Sound, took serious damage in the chilling attack. No one can confirm if the tree will survive, though an expert has been called in.
There are no known suspects or motives at this time, though police are checking all known stiffs in the area. Police confirm that every road in the investigation will be explored to their inevitable conclusion.
Just when you think this guy couldn't get any more Boo-esque, he shows up at his Murder Rock Golf Club shirtless and shoeless, but certainly not cigarless.
If you click on my blogger profile, you will see that I heart leg kicks and fist pumps. The first one stems from Van Morrison's performance with the Band on the Last Waltz. The second stems from doing mock fist pumps in celebration of, well, anything. Turns out (via The Postmen), I should probably take it easy on the latter, considering it might have been what knocked Tiger Woods the fuck out.
When his left knee buckled at last year’s PGA Championship, Tiger Woods wouldn’t admit he hurt himself. It was a little embarrassing considering the limp developed after his fist-pump celebration of a birdie on the eighth hole at Southern Hills.
Yeah! Awkward is fun. See, because, if he hurt his knee celebrating, that would be embarrassing. Get it? Not that it really matters -- he's Tiger Woods. He can do whatever the hell he wants. It would be a lot funnier if Phil strained a pec breast feeding anyway. Read more...
She won by three strokes over Taiwan's 19-year-old Yani Tseng, cruising to a final-round three-under par 69 and finishing 72 holes on 19-under par, 269.
Coming off an incredible 11-shot piss-pounding last week at the Corona Championship in Mexico and ranked atop the entire world, the 26-year-old Ochoa has won five of six events so far this year. High five.
She also became the first woman since Annika Sorenstam in 2001 to win four straight titles... even though Sorenstam never did it in consecutive weeks, making Ochoa that much more awesome. The only thing left for her to do, besides keep winning, is take on Annika head-to-head in a golf battle to the death.
In case you've been wondering what the hell John Daly has been up to since his recent stomach surgery (no, he didn't get it stapled, he had a torn muscle repaired... from being a total fatass) we have the lowdown.
Daly has attributed his recent horrible play with the stomach thing, having withdrawn eight different times and missed the cut 14 times over 33 events.
The injury occurred during the '07 Honda Classic, where he attempted to stop mid-swing when he heard the click of someone's camera. When he stopped, he tore his rotator cuff and dislocated two rib joints where they were attached to the spine. Who knew golf was so dangerous?
The two-time major champ has agreed to play the Spanish Open in Seville in two weeks, rather than Wachovia. He may hang around Europe for a while longer, with the intentions of playing the Italian Open, the Irish Open and maybe even the BMW Championship at Wentworth.
All this talk of John Daly reminds me of a joke.
If girls with huge breasts work at Hooters, where do girls with one leg work?
Only a poor craftsman blames his tools and so you never heard a peep about Tiger and his left knee -- a joint he recently had repaired via arthroscopic surgery.
Of course, when you are dealing with a person that could potentially house a high-tech endoskeleton, we're not quite sure if it was actually surgery or some minor modifications that needed to be made.
Either/or, Tiger will be out of commission for 4-6 weeks, meaning he'll miss The Player Championship but not the US Open; something that could be quite ominous for the rest of the field:
A pissed-off, repaired Tiger looking to bounce back from a second-place Masters finish -- as if a second place finish in a Major would actually require a bouncing back. Of course, this is El Tigré we are talking about and I don't doubt he considers a second place Masters finish insulting.
Everyone's favorite Spanish Stallion rode a couple of clutch putts and a risky wedge on the island-green to a playoff victory at the Players Championship Sunday.
